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"Comrades...If a fox was stealing your chickens, would you slaughter your pig because he had seen the fox? No. You would hunt the fox, find where it lives and destroy it! And what's our surest way of doing this? Become a fox." - Strelnikov, to his troops at a briefing
Colonel Strelnikov is the secondary antagonist of the 1984 film Red Dawn.
He was played by the late William Smith, who also played Blade in the 1986 film Eye of the Tiger.
Biography[]
When he first appears in the movie, Stelnikov condemns the reprisals...saying that such is unproductive and makes the Soviets appear weak. As an alternative, the Colonel introduces his men to the art of counterinsurgency. Strelnikov becomes the heroic Wolverines' deadliest enemy, although he's neither insane nor a mass murderer; on the contrary, he stops the mass executions of civilians in Calumet. The Colonel is an honorable soldier, who takes pride in doing his job well.
He uses Daryl’s family to hunt the guerrillas down as combat pragmatism, the most qualified method he can use to locate and destroy the heroes, with the least amount of polite/cordial casualties. Strelnikov is rarely seen without a submachine gun on his hip; he often has the Jatimatic close to him, which distinguishes the Colonel from his fellow Soviet officers.
In a final confrontation, Wolverine Jed Eckert tricks and outflanks Strelnikov...but not before the Colonel finds and picks off Matt, Jed's younger brother and fellow Wolverine. With a snarl of "You lose", Jed guns down Strelnikov...who fatally wounds Jed in the process.